When I was a child, my mother forced us to go to mass early on Sundays and also at Christmas.
My mind doesn't retain many memories of those days.
I only know that she dressed me like a little doll, with the few pretty clothes she had, and she always sat us up front. I liked it when the priest talked about the poor.
I always concluded that this was why my dad fell asleep in the middle of the sermon: we were poor, and he worked until dawn in arepa shops and dive bars.
Then came the moment of "making peace," and I—despite being very kinesthetic and a big fan of hugs—never felt comfortable.
Later I studied at a Catholic school, where the Bible was read every Friday and I loved it... because it seemed to me like a kind of literary work where I could find all the genres and in any of them I would find: love, resentment, revenge, fears, etc.
They also took us to Mass, sometimes in the internal chapel, and other times in a church near the institution. At the entrance, there was a statue of Saint Francis on a base with the phrase "peace and good," the typical Franciscan greeting.
Over the years, it became easy for me to notice the hypocrisy surrounding my educational environment. You know: "brothers" who were actually homosexuals afraid of being called out; sadistic "brothers" who treated girls like that; nuns who chose that life so they wouldn't have to marry idiots, so they could study, or leave home. Even for the teenage Jessica, it was obvious that the sex scandals that rocked the Church years later were coming.
Not to mention the scant sexual education we received (and it was always for reproductive purposes), the taboos, and the tendency to label the natural as evil. Later, when I grew older, I started reading other things, discovering the history behind the history, and eventually I hated any religious structure.
Plus, my mom stopped taking us to church. I've never asked her why; I guess she got tired of having to herd us there, the tiredness of the years and the extreme workload that has always characterized us. But she believes deeply in God… I know this because she always entrusts the people she loves most to Him, including me.
Maybe that's why, in one way or another, I was left needing something to hold on to when I didn't know what to do, a "place" where I could find peace or deposit what I considered sacred.
Like many, I approached Yoruba beliefs, as well as Buddhism. I read about every religion there is, but I wasn't anywhere. In all of them, by the way, the role of women has a limit, a much lower limit than that of men, obviously.
Today I don't judge anyone, even if I don't share their beliefs, and I even defend Venezuelan syncretism, even if it's from a more social than religious perspective.
In fact, in December I returned to that church near the school. I read "Peace and Good." I went in. I sat in the back row. And I cried for half an hour. I had no reproaches. I just asked someone, something, to help me understand why I was doing "so badly" in love, to send me a sign to let me know whether or not being a mother was in my "destiny," to help me deal with absences, to send light to the people I love (including those who have passed on to other planes), to bring calm to my life.
There, sitting in the middle of a crowd of old people, I remembered I hadn't set foot in a church in four years. The last time had been in the middle of the pandemic. One afternoon, I went absolutely devastated to ask José Gregorio not to take my old man because I wasn't ready to see him go yet, because I had never told him I loved him.
I promised myself that: to tell people how I feel. I've kept my promise.
And I came back… to give thanks. I do that now too.
That day, my ex told me I was a weird atheist. I tried to explain to him, without much success, my eternal need to find a space that would give me respite… because inside me, there are always great (and unnecessary) battles raging, a war inhabits me, and I'm tired.
Then, listening to my own dialogues, I knew: the “God” I needed, the one who could well be called “universe,” “spirituality,” etc., was not in any physical space, but had to be within me… to de-mine them, so that they would no longer hurt.
Psychology has helped me.
And just this Wednesday I met Diego, an 87-year-old doctor, who reminded me of a phrase by Bn Sina (or Avicenna) that keeps going around in my head: "Imagination is half the disease, tranquility is half the remedy, and patience is the beginning of the cure."Then, he prescribed me "Live 24 hours a day, live today, and... pray."
I wondered how to pray and whether this monologue I always maintain in my mind at home was valid. I then tried to escape his religiosity by telling him—half jokingly, half seriously—that I had already placed a couple of important matters "in God's hands," because I don't know what to do when I hold them in my own.
He simply replied, "So you've found Him (God). That's the only important thing. It doesn't matter where."
We continue.
By: Jessica Dos Santos /Instagram: Jessidossantos13
Tell me your story, write it however you like, together we shape it and share it. In life, spreading the different forms of love is always necessary: lasultimasnoticiasdelamor@gmail.com
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Very nice. I think you're on the right track.